Thank you to all who attended and to all who displayed posters at the 11th annual McPherson Eye Research Institute Vision Science poster session on October 24th, including the sixteen students/trainees whose posters were considered for awards. The four judges noted the overall excellence of posters in this year’s competition! The “Best Student Presentation Awards” were awarded as follows:
Best Student Presentation Award, Vision Science, was awared to Sarah Rempel, a graduate student in Professor Timothy Gomez’s lab (Neuroscience). Her poster was titled Human stem cell-derived photoreceptors switch from cell autonomous neurite growth to non-autonomous process stretching with retinal organoid age; its authors were Rempel, Yochana Kancherla, Donald Zack, David Gamm, and Timothy Gomez. As the Best Student Presentation Award recipient, Sarah is invited to give a seminar in the fall 2020 McPherson ERI seminar series.
Two Honorable Mention awards were given:
Abhilash Sawant, a graduate student with Mrinalini Hoon (Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences) and Raunak Sinha (Neuroscience), received an Honorable Mention for his poster titled Mixed GABA-Glycine inhibitory synapses mediate postsynaptic inhibition on mouse ON alpha retinal ganglion cells. The poster was authored by Sawant, Adam Bleckert, Clare Gamlin, Briana Noel Ebbinghaus, Wan-Qing Yu, Rachel Wong, Raunak Sinha, and Mrinalini Hoon.
Ryan Niemeier, a graduate student in Jeremy Rogers’ lab (Biomedical Engineering), received an Honorable Mention for his poster titled LINK: A unified imaging platform with multiscale potential. The poster’s authors were Michael Pinkert, Zach Simmons, Ryan Niemeier, Bing Dai, Lauren Woods, Timothy Hall, Jeremy Rogers, Kevin Eliceiri, and Paul Campagnola.
The University Book Store (UBS) at the Health Sciences Learning Center donated gift cards for Honorable Mention award recipients. From the McPherson ERI, each awardee received a copy of the book Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing, by Margaret Livingstone. The Best Student Presentation Award, Vision Science recipient was also awarded a Food Fight Restaurant Group gift certificate.
Congratulations to Sarah, Abhilash, and Ryan!!